 /*******************************************************************************
  * Copyright (c) 2000, 2005 IBM Corporation and others.
  * All rights reserved. This program and the accompanying materials
  * are made available under the terms of the Eclipse Public License v1.0
  * which accompanies this distribution, and is available at
  * http://www.eclipse.org/legal/epl-v10.html
  *
  * Contributors:
  * IBM Corporation - initial API and implementation
  *******************************************************************************/
 package org.eclipse.ui.views;

 import org.eclipse.core.runtime.CoreException;
 import org.eclipse.core.runtime.IAdaptable;
 import org.eclipse.jface.resource.ImageDescriptor;
 import org.eclipse.ui.IViewPart;
 import org.eclipse.ui.IWorkbenchPartDescriptor;

 /**
  * This is a view descriptor. It provides a "description" of a given
  * given view so that the view can later be constructed.
  * <p>
  * The view registry provides facilities to map from an extension
  * to a IViewDescriptor.
  * </p>
  * <p>
  * This interface is not intended to be implemented by clients.
  * </p>
  *
  * @see org.eclipse.ui.views.IViewRegistry
  * @since 3.1
  */
 public interface IViewDescriptor extends IWorkbenchPartDescriptor, IAdaptable {
     /**
      * Creates an instance of the view defined in the descriptor.
      *
      * @return the view part
      * @throws CoreException thrown if there is a problem creating the part
      */
     public IViewPart createView() throws CoreException;

     /**
      * Returns an array of strings that represent
      * view's category path. This array will be used
      * for hierarchical presentation of the
      * view in places like submenus.
      * @return array of category tokens or null if not specified.
      */
     public String [] getCategoryPath();

     /**
      * Returns the description of this view.
      *
      * @return the description
      */
     public String getDescription();

     /**
      * Returns the id of the view.
      *
      * @return the id
      */
     public String getId();

     /**
      * Returns the descriptor for the icon to show for this view.
      */
     public ImageDescriptor getImageDescriptor();

     /**
      * Returns the label to show for this view.
      *
      * @return the label
      */
     public String getLabel();

     /**
      * Returns the default fast view width ratio for this view.
      *
      * @return the fast view width ratio
      */
     public float getFastViewWidthRatio();

     /**
      * Returns whether this view allows multiple instances.
      *
      * @return whether this view allows multiple instances
      */
     public boolean getAllowMultiple();

 }

